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4.3 AVERAGE
4.3 AVERAGE
A good look into the team put together by W. Bush to prepare for pandemics. It follows the key players through the COVID-19 era and introduced a few new people. It gave good stories about the people.
fast-paced
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
Very well written. Really highlights just how poor America's response was to COVID and how good it could have been, had those in power listened.
Good for: If you want to get angry at the CDC and government that prioritizes politics over people and lost chances to learn from the past. And, and, and.
Quick read, well written. I do think it would have been interesting to at least have some deeper perspective from various ranks of the current CDC. That *could* help the (my) general takeaway be a little less strong than “just burn it to the ground and start over.”
Quick read, well written. I do think it would have been interesting to at least have some deeper perspective from various ranks of the current CDC. That *could* help the (my) general takeaway be a little less strong than “just burn it to the ground and start over.”
dark
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
emotional
informative
medium-paced
Felt very American. Was disheartening to read about how unprepared the government and CDC were to prevent the spread of disease. Unexpected amount of TB mentioned. The message of the book was to act early and take actions that seem like overreactions when it comes to the spread of communicable diseases. By the time you have enough information, the exponential growth of the infected may become uncontrollable.
informative
fast-paced
Really well written and eye opening
Very interesting, I never knew what I didn’t know. This book was about the people who knew how to respond to a pandemic before it happened. It is disappointing that we didn’t listen to them.
Solid Michael Lewis book. Really broke down where the non-vaccine social interventions to combat a pandemic came from and how unequipped America was to use them effectively.
Quotes
- "You cannot wait for the smoke to clear: once you can see things clearly it is already too late. You can’t outrun an epidemic: by the time you start to run it is already upon you. Identify what is important and drop everything that is not. Figure out the equivalent of an escape fire."
- "You can keep mistakes from happening if you can identify the almost mistakes. This kind of changes how I view everything."
- "The model he’d built with his daughter showed that there was no difference between giving a person a vaccine and removing him or her from the social network: in each case, a person lost the ability to infect others. Yet all the expert talk was about how to speed the production and distribution of vaccines. No one seemed to be exploring the most efficient and least disruptive ways to remove people from social networks."
- "It shouldn’t be the Centers for Disease Control. It should be the Centers for Disease Observation and Reporting. That’s what they do well."
- "You know why I don't think they wanted to accept it? It's too terrifying.... local nobodies [public health officers] are really in charge.... there was no system of public health in the United States, just a patchwork of state and local health officers beholden to a greater or lesser degree to local elected officials. 3,500 separate entities that have been starved of resources for the past 40 years."
- "The goal of the health state officer in California is to have someone to fire."
- "The solution required someone in it to be brave, and the system didn't reward bravery.... it needed courage, and courage didn't pay." Note: changing civil servant positions from career civil servants to political appointees created some pretty perverse incentives (ie hide problems/avoid hard choices).
- "One measure of poverty is how little you have. Another is how difficult you find it to take advantage of what others try to give you."
Quotes
- "You cannot wait for the smoke to clear: once you can see things clearly it is already too late. You can’t outrun an epidemic: by the time you start to run it is already upon you. Identify what is important and drop everything that is not. Figure out the equivalent of an escape fire."
- "You can keep mistakes from happening if you can identify the almost mistakes. This kind of changes how I view everything."
- "The model he’d built with his daughter showed that there was no difference between giving a person a vaccine and removing him or her from the social network: in each case, a person lost the ability to infect others. Yet all the expert talk was about how to speed the production and distribution of vaccines. No one seemed to be exploring the most efficient and least disruptive ways to remove people from social networks."
- "It shouldn’t be the Centers for Disease Control. It should be the Centers for Disease Observation and Reporting. That’s what they do well."
- "You know why I don't think they wanted to accept it? It's too terrifying.... local nobodies [public health officers] are really in charge.... there was no system of public health in the United States, just a patchwork of state and local health officers beholden to a greater or lesser degree to local elected officials. 3,500 separate entities that have been starved of resources for the past 40 years."
- "The goal of the health state officer in California is to have someone to fire."
- "The solution required someone in it to be brave, and the system didn't reward bravery.... it needed courage, and courage didn't pay." Note: changing civil servant positions from career civil servants to political appointees created some pretty perverse incentives (ie hide problems/avoid hard choices).
- "One measure of poverty is how little you have. Another is how difficult you find it to take advantage of what others try to give you."